Seeds of Destruction - Rainforest Foundation UK

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SECTION 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS “All contracts and agreements between governments and palm oil developers should be made public.” 5.2 RECOMMENDATIONS 5.2.1 GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS • Greater transparency needed: There is a need for transparency in the industry, specifically in dealings between palm oil investors and Congo Basin governments. All contracts and agreements between governments and palm oil developers should be made public, to enable proper public debate, reduce the potential for corruption and enable local consultation and participation prior to development. Other relevant documents, including SEIAs and official concession maps and planting plans, should also be made public. • Small holder cultivation should be prioritised: Small holder palm oil production may help address the need for investments in the Congo Basin countries and provide long-term sustainable development opportunities for rural people, provided that it respects and ensures formal recognition of customary rights. New palm oil developments should, in consultation with local and indigenous communities, aim to maximise local, household and/or farm family production, as well as agro-forestry techniques, where oil palms are grown together with other crops and species or integrated into community forestry. However, much further consideration and exploration needs to be given as to how some of the potential challenges and disadvantages of smallholder palm oil production in the Congo Basin could be overcome. • Rehabilitation of old plantations and use of degraded land should be prioritised: In countries with dilapidated oil palm plantations, any development should focus on these areas instead of expanding into natural forest areas. The planning of new oil palm developments should include a presumption in favour of utilisation of land which can be assessed as ‘degraded’ (in relation to, for example, previous forest or other natural ecosystems) – while bearing in mind that such areas may be particularly important in local livelihoods, even if they are not subject to formal land title. Efforts to promote developments on degraded land must be coupled with parallel measures to prevent developments on forested land. • Indirect impacts need to be taken into account: Assessments of the likely environmental and social impacts of largescale oil palm developments in the Congo Basin need to take account of potentially major indirect impacts, such as through new infrastructure increasing accessibility to nearby forested areas, in-migration of employment-seekers, displacement of subsistence farmers into adjacent areas and potential increase in social conflicts. • Congo Basin NGOs have a crucial role: Non-governmental organisations in the region can play critical roles in minimising negative impacts of the expansion of largescale oil palm in the Congo Basin. They can provide independent assessments of land ownership rights and environmental and socio-economic conditions in proposed planting sites, help local and indigenous communities articulate their concerns, convene relevant stakeholders to seek consensus around proposed developments, and act as independent monitors. However, sustained technical and human capacity building will be needed to ensure that they can fully fulfil these roles. 5.2.2 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CONGO BASIN GOVERNMENTS, PALM OIL PLANTATION DEVELOPERS, INVESTORS AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS: Recommendations for governments in the Congo Basin: • Information on impacts of oil palm in South-East Asia should be made available in the Congo Basin: Decisionmakers and other stakeholders in Congo Basin countries should have access to reliable information on large-scale oil palm expansion in Indonesia and Malaysia in order to learn lessons to avoid major cultural, social and environmental damage. • Governments should develop clear and transparent policies on oil palm development: Governments should develop and implement clear and transparent policies on the allocation and management of oil palm plantations, in consultation with all relevant stakeholders. Large-scale agroinvestments should be developed in harmony with national land-use plans and poverty reduction strategies. Governments should avoid signing agreements with oil palm developers that include restrictive confidentiality clauses and all such contracts and agreements should be available to the public. The public auctioning of oil palm development licenses should be explored. • Governments should make high environmental and social standards compulsory: Governments should legislate strict standards to ensure that highconservation value (HCV) forests and high carbon stock (HCS) forests are not allocated to oil palm developments, and that an obligation to obtain free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) is obtained (see next recommendation). Companies with a poor track record elsewhere should be excluded from developing oil palm plantations. • Customary tenure and user rights should be mapped and recognised, and free prior and informed consent sought: Government agencies should develop the means to systematically record and recognise both the formal and customary tenure conditions within any potential palm oil development area, prior to approval of projects. Careful analysis of existing livelihoods systems, especially those that rely heavily on subsistence (non-cash) use of natural forest resources which may be largely invisible to standard cost-benefit analyses, need to be made prior to approval of projects. The free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of local and indigenous communities should be obtained before any development is negotiated with palm oil developers. Kate Eshelby 56 THE RAINFOREST FOUNDATION UK SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION FEBRUARY 2013 57
SECTION 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Recommendations for palm oil developers: • Customary land rights of communities must be respected: Palm oil developers need to be aware of, and respect, customary land tenure and usage rights of forest communities and ensure that local and indigenous communities are genuinely able to exercise the principle of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and their right to be consulted over developments affecting their lands. This would require, as a minimum, a participatory process involving all sections of local and indigenous communities through which the areas under customary rights and usage regimes are clearly identified and mapped, that communities are made fully aware of the consequences of the conversion of these lands for palm oil development, and that any expressed collective demand to exclude these lands from future development is respected. Some companies included in this report have taken positive steps in this direction, but more needs to be done. As stated “PALM OIL DEVELOPERS NEED TO RESPECT CUSTOMARY RIGHTS OF FOREST COMMUNITIES.” • RSPO alone will not be enough: Standards and certification through the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) have been strongly criticised in South-East Asia and are unlikely be easily adapted to the Congo Basin, or robust enough to ensure that conflicts over land tenure or social and environmental impacts will be avoided. Palm oil developers will need to ensure that due diligence goes beyond application of the RSPO’s standards, and should be wary of the quality of thirdparty assessments for RSPO certification compliance in the Congo Basin, due to the lack of adequate, independent, reliable and easily obtainable information on the socio-economic, tenure and livelihoods conditions of proposed development sites, and weak capacity of both governmental and non-governmental organisations. Recommendations for investors: • Banks and other investors must abide by responsible investment standards: Large-scale oil palm development usually requires substantial up-front investment and support from banks and other financial services providers. To avoid bankrolling destruction in the Congo Basin, investors should sign up to and abide by the Equator Principles for project financing, in particular Principles 2 and 3 on social and environmental assessments and standards, and Principle 5 on consultation and transparency. 225 Recommendations for international organisations: • Greater technical assistance needed on mapping customary land tenure: Assistance will need to be given to most governments within the region to ensure that they have adequate capacity to properly assess, record and legally recognise local (customary) land tenure regimes and traditional forest utilisation patterns in areas earmarked for oil palm development, as well as to ensure that they have the resources and skills necessary to monitor oil palm developments and ensure compliance with the relevant laws and norms. • Support capacity building of in-country civil society organisations: Donors should help strengthen the capacity of local civil society organisations to raise awareness of, and monitor the expansion of, oil palm – and other large-scale plantations – in the Congo Basin. In addition, donors could support programmes to accompany local and indigenous communities in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of community projects, in order that communities benefit from any oil palm development. • Scrutinise how oil palm expansion fits with national commitments on forest management and conservation: Donor governments and agencies should scrutinise how current and planned expansion of large-scale oil palm plantations fits with Congo Basin governments’ commitments and engagements with international processes concerning the improved conservation and management of forests, especially countries which have signed a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) as part of the European Union’s Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) programme, or are receiving official development funding related to REDD. The multi-stakeholder approaches and forest governance-strengthening embedded in the FLEGT processes should be extended to decisionmaking concerning palm oil developments. Consideration should be given as to whether the kind of international timber trade controls mutually agreed to through VPA agreements could usefully be extended to agricultural commodities such as palm oil, where the production of these affects forests. As large-scale palm oil developments in the Congo Basin are likely to cause significant levels of emissions of climate-changing gases from land-use developments, as well as shaping wider patterns of forest loss or conservation, donors of REDD funding should seek to address such developments through both ‘REDD-readiness’ programmes and/or REDD ‘payments for achievements’ agreements. above, governments would preferably record and legally recognise customary tenure and usage regimes in the relevant areas before any FPIC consultations are undertaken, and would make FPIC a legal requirement. In addition, financial institutions should introduce specific forest policies, which (among other things) preclude them from engaging with agricultural plantation developments on forested land with high carbon stocks or high conservation value, or without the free, prior, informed consent of local people. • Financial and technical assistance on smallholder production: Financial, technical and market assistance/incentives may be required to ensure that smallholder production offers a viable and attractive proposition to local communities, governments and investors. Kate Eshelby 58 THE RAINFOREST FOUNDATION UK SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION FEBRUARY 2013 59
Page 1 and 2: UNDER THE CANOPY THE RAINFOREST FOU
Page 3 and 4: CONTENTS KEY MESSAGES 5 Confirmed a
Page 5 and 6: CONFIRMED AND POTENTIAL PALM OIL DE
Page 7 and 8: THE PEOPLE OF THE CONGO BASIN RAINF
Page 9 and 10: SECTION 2: OIL PALM IN THE CONGO BA
Page 11 and 12: SECTION 2: OIL PALM IN THE CONGO BA
Page 13 and 14: SECTION 3: CASE STUDIES OF NEW OIL
Page 25 and 26: SECTION 4: POTENTIAL SOCIAL & ENVIR
Page 27 and 28: SECTION 4: POTENTIAL SOCIAL & ENVIR
Page 29: SECTION 4: POTENTIAL SOCIAL & ENVIR
Page 33 and 34: ANNEX 1: SUMMARY INFORMATION ON KNO
Page 35 and 36: REFERENCES 46 Profundo, 2012, “Fe
Page 37 and 38: REFERENCES 207 Pers. comm., Samuel

Seeds of Destruction - Rainforest Foundation UK

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